Photo Credit: Kelly Bolter
England native Aymen Saleh was grabbing coffee the morning after playing his first show in Milwaukee when he saw the Highbury Pub, a soccer bar displaying the logo of the Arsenal Football Club, and a thought crossed his mind: “I could live here.”
As fate would have it, he’d soon need somewhere to live anyway. His indie-pop band Holy Pinto, previously a two-piece with his friend Ryan Hurley, was about to be cut in half as his bandmate left the touring life behind for a real job. Hurley delayed entering the work force just long enough for the two to record one final album together, Adult, a tender, good-humored record about the creeping pressure of adult responsibilities.
In hindsight, Saleh realizes, it was inevitable that the bandmates would go their separate ways. “There were definitely times when we were on the road together, and I could tell he had one eye not totally on the wheel—little moments where he’d be like, ‘I miss my girlfriend’ or ‘I want to be making more money’ or ‘I want to be not sleeping on a floor right now,’” Saleh says. “He was the personification of the desire to be an adult, or to be what people expect you to be once you reach a certain age. And I’m still not there.”
With no clear next move, Saleh winged it. “I didn’t have any plans, but I had this valid U.S. visa, so I was like, ‘Why not go there and figure it out? I’m just going to get a one-way ticket flight, and I’m going to buy a used van when I get there.’” Saleh recalls. “So I put a mattress in the back of the van and was just living there. I headed down to Texas where I figured it’d be warmer.”
There was one thing Saleh hadn’t accounted for: life in a van is really, really boring. “I’m not good at being alone,” Saleh says. So, when a friend invited him back to Milwaukee, he took him up on the offer, crashing with members of the pop-punk band Telethon at their house in Bay View.
At first, he slept on the floor. Then he graduated to a real room with a futon. He never planned on staying, exactly. It’s more like he just never decided to leave. “It was like I was happy here and then I just kept being happy. I’d always be like, ‘I’m leaving it a week,’ then, at the end, I’d be like, ‘but actually I had a really good week. I don’t need to go for another three days.’ It was always like that.”
While Milwaukee might seem like an unlikely landing spot for a musician, especially for an international artist with a new record to promote, Saleh says the city suits him. “I understand why a lot of musicians wouldn’t move to Milwaukee, because it’s not a major market, to use that awful term,” he says. “But for me it’s different, because I grew up in Canterbury in England, which is a small town of like 45,000 people, so in way Milwaukee was an upgrade.”
He also discovered a community here, making friends and finding acts to play shows with and musicians to fill out his live band. “Being in Milwaukee, you have a lot more music here than people give it credit for,” he says. “You have a lot of great shows, a lot of great radio stations, a lot of great venues. There is a good scene here, and a scene where you can have friends and know most people, but not know everyone.”
He admits that he was probably more primed than most touring musicians to be awed by Milwaukee, though. One of his favorite bands hails from here: Maritime, who he namechecked on Holy Pinto’s 2016 debut Congratulations, an album that also opens with a nod to Promise Ring’s “Stop Playing Guitar.”
Maritime, in particular, was one of the bands that helped Saleh’s tastes evolve away from the pop-punk of his youth to toward the precise, neatly manicured emo-pop of Adult. “I just saw Maritime as a bit of a benchmark,” Saleh says. “They are the heart of what I do. I grew up with punk and grew into indie rock.”
In fact, if there’s one way that Milwaukee hasn’t met Saleh’s expectations, it’s that he’s been living here for more than a year and somehow hasn’t managed to see Maritime yet. “It’s so annoying!” he laughs. “I hope I get to see them soon. I had a friend who asked me, ‘I’m hanging out with someone from the Promise Ring, want to come?’ And I was like, ‘I”ll pass on that.’ I don’t need to haunt someone at a social event. Just get Davey an acoustic guitar and put me in the room! That’s all I want.”
Holy Pinto plays an album release show Saturday, March 9, at Cactus Club with Retirement Party, Pierre, Clem and DJ DRiPSweat at 7 p.m.
